Requirements Based Testing Keep Engineering & Testing Teams in Synch

Core Brands Company Background: Technology Solutions for the Home

Core Brands is the newly formed subsidiary of technology giant Nortek which delivers innovative technology driven products that provide lifestyle improvements at home and work. Nortek, a global diversified company with thousands of employees founded Core Brands in 2012 as a means to leverage the product and marketing strengths of its formerly independent audio, power management and control brands. Headquartered in California, Core Brands combines 10 of Nortek’s top brands to provide home integration systems, including audio, control and power solutions, digital display mounting solutions, ventilation products, heating and cooling products and air management systems. Core Brands targets residential, commercial and professional markets and claims multiple distribution channels across the U.S. and worldwide.

The Team: Verifying Custom Install Software

Dan Emerald has been with Nortek for four years and joined Core Brands a year ago as the Director of Product Verification. In this role, he tests and verifies the quality of all the Core Brand software involved in the custom install audio, video and control markets. His runs an SQA team with 13 people.

Testuff: A Proven Track Record

With many years of experience in the testing field, Dan brought Testuff with him to Core Brands from his previous employment in a similar field. As a senior tester, he used to write his own tests by hand until one day a particularly complex test produced over 300 written pages for review. A change in procedure was needed and through internet research Dan discovered Testuff and he hasn’t looked back since.

The Advantage of Requirements Based Testing

Now, six years later, Dan relies on Testuff’s unique capabilities for much more than test writing. In his current role, it is critical that he ensure that Core Brand’s final products include all of the software features originally envisioned by the design teams. Dan utilizes Testuff’s requirement based testing capabilities to certify all of the product’s design parameters have been incorporated. “Ideally, marketing comes up with a set of requirements, engineering responds with a functional set that speaks to those requirements and the test plan needs to ensure that those all of those requirements are covered,” Dan explained. “Testuff, with its requirement based testing options, allows us to tie it all together which is the ultimate goal,” he said.
In addition Testuff’s superb database allows Dan’s team to import and export numerous variables and test the relationships between them. The database components are reusable allowing Dan and his team maximum flexibility to set up new tests with varying relationships.

Benefits & Conclusion

Testing software is typically used by companies to find bugs that create malfunctions within software solutions. The requirement-based testing capabilities, provided by Testuff, however, allow Dan and his team not only to confirm that their custom install software is working properly, but that it also includes all of the dazzling features envisioned by the marketing and production teams.
The Core Brands software quality assurance team uses Testuff every day and it will continue to be an integral part of their ability to create high level software.